Two Māori gum-diggers pose with a substantial pile of kauri gum, representing a week’s labour. Photo credit: Museum at Te Ahu
In the middle of the 19th century, New Zealand’s South Island struck gold. Gabriel Read, an Australian prospector who had previously searched for gold in California and Australia, discovered the precious metal in a creek bed near Lawrence. News of the find spread quickly, drawing thousands of prospectors from the dwindling goldfields of Australia, as well as from Europe, the United States, and China. Boomtowns such as Dunedin, Lawrence, Hokitika, and Thames expanded rapidly, with some populations quadrupling within just a few years.
Less than a thousand kilometers away, in New Zealand’s North Island, a different kind of gold rush was on. At its peak, at the turn of the 20th century, some 20,000 fortune-hunters were spread across some 800,000 acres of land looking not for metallic gold, but a treasure that closely resembled it—dried gum from kauri trees. Known as kauri gum, this natural treasure ranged in colour from chalky white to reddish-brown to deep black, but the most coveted was a rich, golden hue that could be polished to a glass-like finish. Kauri gum became one of New Zealand’s most striking and valued natural products.
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